In the first two books of Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling keeps her readers in pure suspense. She creates an environment where we never know what will happen next. She makes us think something, but we end up finding a few chapters later that she had just played us and what we believe was true is completely wrong. This is what Wolgang Iser says in "The Reading Process" that "expectations are scarcely ever fulfilled in truly literary texts" (53) because our expectations are always modified by the text.
For instance, in the first book we expect that the person who will know the most about magic and will be better at it is going to be a student who comes from a pure-blood family, but we soon understand that the opposite is true here: Hermione is a Muggleborn and she is by far the most knowledgeable student when it comes to magic. Also, the author tricks us in expecting Snape to be the one wanting to steal the Stone because he is in our eyes the bad guy of the school so he must be a thief, too.
In addition, in the second book, we expect Draco to be the heir of Slytherin because he is mean with Hermione and calls her "a filthy Mudblood". Then, the author modifies our expectation by telling us that Draco is not the heir, and we start to have doubts about Harry Potter being the heir. Again, we are tricked by the text and our expectations are not fulfilled. It creates more suspense, and it forces us to be more careful about every detail in the story and to try to see past the obvious false leads.
However, sometimes our expectations are met, and it balances out with the numerous times when we were wrong about the others. For example, in the end of the first book we expect Harry to survive, and he does.
When reading the second book I found myself having a lot of the same thoughts that you talk about in your third paragraph. Rowling does a great job with building anticipation and creating suspense. I just wanted to add that as well as expecting Harry or Malfoy as the Heir, I for a moment thought it could be Hagrid as well. When Riddle shows Harry his memories and we hear about Hagrid in the Chamber, we then start making assumptions about him and about how he could possibly be the one. It's amazing and exciting the way she always keeps us guessing. I think it is also intriguing that Rowling built up to this moment all the way back in the first book, when we learn that Hagrid was expelled from Hogwarts for some reason.
ReplyDelete